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YouTube using antipattern to force people enable history

94 points by xchip ↗ HN
If your history is off Youtube's landing page will show no videos and will "encourage" you to enable the history.

Any ideas why are they using this trick?

68 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] thread
NoZebra120vClip
Because the feature doesn't work without it?
rany_
A month ago it didn't work that way. You used to be able to disable watch history and have it base recommendations on your subscriptions, liked/disliked content, etc.
piotrke
I was waiting for this feature for years!

I often go to youtube to find explaination to different things, but usually I ended up watching 10 other very interesting videos and even sometimes forgetting what for I came in the first place!

It's either a weak will of mine or great algorithms serving what I would love to watch. Now it's an easy game: only what I came for and no distractions!

Best move ever, YT!

addisonl
I love and share this view—whenever a website uses dark patterns like this to try and get me to do something I just close the website and thank them for helping me reduce my screen time!
simonsarris
> and even sometimes forgetting what for I came in the first place!

I do that too but thankfully I have history enabled so I just check there.

blondin
indeed!

i only see subscriptions and videos i care about now. and through my subscriptions, i discover videos related to what i care about. they should do away with the home page all together for people who have watch history turned off.

best move ever!

bromuro
It’s true! Finally no recommendations, no pushed subscriptions, no tricks to subconsciously force me to keep watching. Now if only they could do the same in the video pages.
sp332
What videos would they recommend to you anyway?
CharlesW
They could show what's popular across the platform, what's new and/or popular in your subscriptions, etc.
grotorea
Do users here actually want youtube to show you "what's popular across the platform" i.e. the default youtube homepage?
bravetraveler
I do, but on closer thought, perhaps I shouldn't

It's good in the "I just want to peruse and find something unusual/interesting" sense

If nothing else, absently happening across what's new or popular

It's a massive time sink and probably best spent elsewhere

dawnerd
The same ones they used to? They can surface up videos from channels you’re subbed to that you haven’t watched. They could show you videos you started to watch like netflix does. They could show next up for playlists. Lots of options if they actually cared about their product and not just getting you into an algorithm loop
ilkke
Mysteriously I'm also seeing videos I already watched(!) and what I can only imagine is videos that someone paid to promote and Google doesn't care I'm not remotely the target audience
duskwuff
> They can surface up videos from channels you’re subbed to that you haven’t watched. They could show you videos you started to watch like netflix does.

All of those things depend on tracking your viewing history.

t-writescode
It could also show you videos that are trending and watched by people that are subbed to the same things you're subbed to. They definitely have that information. Or old videos of people you're subbed to and haven't upvoted or downvoted or whatever.

This *was* a very powerful and useful feature they've ripped from us.

Sloppy
same as for non-logged in users, namely popular for various categories
2OEH8eoCRo0
I wish they'd recommend me local videos or videos about my area.
WeylandYutani
I use revanced on my phone I don't even know what YouTube is supposed to look like.
JimtheCoder
I'm not sure it's a trick.

It's just a thing IMO.

dawnerd
It’s weird since their homepage already showed suggested videos based on who you subscribed to. Not sure why they’d kill their metrics over watch history that you know they totally track anyways.
8note
My main guess is that it uses a separate data pipeline to make those suggestions, and that that data pipeline is not cost effective.

Thus, they simplified it down to one recommendation tool, that uses history in it

CharlesW
But it worked fine with or without history enabled previously, and continues to work in other clients (like the Xbox client). Whether or not you believe it was malevolent, this was a user experience choice.
jamesdwilson
Correction: If your display of the videos from your history is off. I am sure they are still logging them.
NoZebra120vClip
I'm not so sure. I got called out on this theory. It would violate GDPR and stuff.

Most articles I can find seem convinced that if you disable YouTube history, it's disabled and not logged. If you delete it, it's deleted and it's gone.

I suppose Google could secretly or surreptitiously log it and save it, but nobody seems able to prove that.

There are certainly a lot of other trails left. Any link, dislike, or comment you leave is a historical marker. Every URL you visit goes into your browser history, so is that disabled too? All your DNS queries, though these won't pinpoint individual videos.

sublinear
Why would you ever even log into youtube?!
zoklet-enjoyer
Many reasons. Subscriptions, saved videos, upload videos
hggh
You can use RSS/Atom instead of subscribe
zoklet-enjoyer
This is fine. Just makes me actually watch the stuff I subscribed too
Sloppy
If you are not logged in to YouTube you get generic crappy recommendations, why not this for someone without history turned on?

I use the YouTube recommender extensively and understand the issues about getting increasing crap in recs. I really have no interest in fake science crap or conspiracy theory crap! So I aggressively "do not like" videos or channels that turn up with this junk. I'm not sure I could use YouTube without the recommender and would not use it if I got constant crap. The "do not like" tells the recommender not to send that particular type of crap and though more crap will inevitably drift in, the result is a pretty useful feature.

fckthisguy
That's pretty much what's been happening for the last decade. I turned off search history an age ago and I've had a slightly tailored (based on subscriptions) but mostly generic home page since them.

It's not a cas where they can't. They decide on this course of action.

On a related note, they already show an (almost) totally generic feed for Shorts. If you turn search history off, you see a lot of Andrew Tate, anti-trans, and "masculinity is under attack" messaging. It's disgusting to think that's what Google are showing to new sign users.

jsnell
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817
rawling
Tell HN: YouTube requires watch history on for home screen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37158674 Tell HN: YouTube is not showing home recommendations when watch history is off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37157835

YouTube Will Display a Blank Home Feed If Your Watch History Is Turned Off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37151135

YouTube will stop showing videos on the homepage if your watch history is off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37066718

YouTube no longer suggests videos if your ‘watch history’ is turned off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37058189

YouTube will stop showing videos on the homepage if your watch history is off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37054233

YouTube will now show a blank homepage if you don’t have watch history on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37053817

Ash HN: YouTube home page blank when history is off https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36963702

ChrisArchitect
Sick of this. Like, OP, you're either paying attn or search or something. Day after day repeated posts
Astronaut3315
I kind of like it this way. It’ll help me focus on watching what I came for and nothing more. I’m absolutely going to leave history off.
agubelu
I don't really care since I immediately switch to the subscriptions tab as soon as I open the app, and my bookmark on my desktop browser is set to subscriptions too.

Just another anti-user annoyance, like having to click 3 different menus to hand-pick a specific video quality on the app and having it not stored as your preference. Thankfully it's all fixed by Revanced.

By the way, a bug that I found a few minutes ago on YT for TV: if you're watching a video with subs on (manual subs, not autogenerated) and an ad rolls in, it switch to automatic subtitles for the ad, and then doesn't switch back when the ad is over.

karaterobot
I use FreeTube now, but when I used to go to Youtube, I used a plugin which was very bluntly titled Replace Youtube's Home with Subscriptions, which I recommend to all. The Youtube home page is a clear example of putting growth above user preference, and one of those reasons why everybody uses YT, but few people really ... like it.
TrianguloY
You can long tap the app icon (depends on the launcher) to open the app shortcuts. One of them is to open the subscriptions tab. You can long tap + drag to move it to your desktop (again, depends on the launcher) so this way you can open YouTube directly to the subscriptions!
agubelu
I didn't know this, thanks!
montag
Seems pretty benign as far as dark patterns go.
zb3
Very good move by YouTube, helps me avoid getting distracted and increases my overall happiness :)
ulrashida
Jokes on them: I'm very happy that slow loading and often useless display has been disabled on page load. It had a bad habit of recommending dozens of shows over five years old A QWLL. That option is staying off forever.
blondin
the hilarious thing is that this pattern is orthogonal to their "mini player" feature which is supposed to keep your video playing while you are browsing.

now you have a "mini player" on an almost blank page.

ro_bit
A half decent workaround is to enable watch history, watch one video, and then pause watch history again without clearing the video. For some reason this shows recommendations again
cobertos
And here I am thinking "I can disable the YouTube homepage by disabling history?? Sign me the fuck up!"
BasedAnon
i thought the exact same thing. I've had the the watch history disabled for tiiiime and today i saw that i have no homepage and i went from 'this is strange' to 'wow i feel much better navigating youtube and i'm not feeling very angered or disappointed or distracted'
wruza
wow i feel much better navigating youtube

How do you navigate it? Does search start working once history is gone?

cobertos
I've found searching in an app like NewPipe to be loads better than searching on anything YouTube can create a fingerprint for (browser, in YT app). I get a lot of very helpful, low view count videos in DIY, programming, and research of old tech things.
BasedAnon
Search has always worked for me, but I mean the experience of going onto YouTube and then deciding what I want to watch. Instead of seeing a bunch of random stuff I don't care about I can just go directly to my subscription page without any noise.
demarq
This sucks for smaller YouTubers. Discovery is everything.
simonbutt
Once in a while HN provides absolute gems. Would never have known about this anti procrastination feature otherwise!
verytrivial
I won't be enabling it. And frankly I'm glad for one less wolf at the door of my attention.
t-writescode
I was trying to find a way to provide feedback on this issue; but, I'm supposed to go to their YouTube forums to handle it, and the top voted post on those forums is how they've disabled posting on the forums for several months.